Now that the Senate has fled Washington until after Labor Day, Republicans finally have a chance to sell President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ to their constituents, but some fear that Democrats already have an advantage in the messaging war.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said that Republicans could ‘absolutely’ do better in selling the colossal bill to combat Democrats’ ‘lies.’  

‘Well, we should have been prepared right off the bat and talked about, ‘No, we’re not talking about reforming Medicaid designed for [women, children and the elderly]. We’re looking at how we can save and preserve it and repair the damage done by the Obamacare addition to it,” he told Fox News Digital. ‘We should have been talking about that, but we didn’t.’

Since Trump signed the bill into law, and throughout the entire process to get it to his desk, Democrats have largely been unified in their attacks against the bill, rebranding it as Republicans’ ‘big, ugly betrayal,’ and targeting cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and a litany of other policies.

‘It’s a very unpopular bill, so if I were them, I would probably go out and start trying to spin,’ Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital.

Messaging against the bill has become routine in Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s floor speeches, where he often targets the cuts to Medicaid touted by the GOP as reforms to a broken system.

‘The more Americans learn about the Republicans’ bill, the more they are realizing that Donald Trump and Republicans sold them a raw deal,’ the New York Democrat said in a floor speech last week. ‘The Republicans’ ‘big, ugly betrayal’ is one of the most devastating bills for Americans’ healthcare that we’ve ever seen.’

Polling of the bill’s favorability among Americans is also working against Republicans. A Fox News poll conducted in June after the House GOP passed the legislation found that 59% of respondents opposed the bill.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., charged that ‘90% of the media is lying’ about the bill, and countered that Republicans were actually increasing Medicaid spending faster than the rate of inflation ‘to the tune of $200 billion a year when it’s all said.’

‘This is not the first message like this that we’ve struggled to get the truth through,’ he told Fox News Digital.

‘Republicans need to lean into it,’ he continued. ‘We worked really hard, and we’re going to save and preserve Medicaid for those who need it the most. And we need to be sharing that.’

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., contended that Republicans shouldn’t be shy about the work they put into the bill.

Hawley, shortly after the bill passed early last month, held an event in his home state pushing the bill. He, alongside former Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., lauded the bill’s inclusion of his Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which renewed and expanded compensation funding for people exposed to nuclear waste.

When asked if Republicans had gotten off to a slow start on selling the bill, he said that too much time had been devoted to talking ‘about Medicaid, for my own taste.’

‘It’s less of that,’ he said. ‘Talk about the tax cuts in this bill for working people, you know. I mean, that’s what people want. I mean, I was asked when I went home. I was asked immediately by people, ‘When are those no taxes on tips? When does that start?’ So, I mean, people are tracking it, but they’re tracking what’s for them.’

And Sen. Tommy Tubberville, R-Ala., charged that Democrats had ‘zero credibility’ when it came to bashing the GOP for cuts and reforms.

‘We got a lot of time,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘There will be a lot of water underneath the bridge. You won’t hear about the ‘big, beautiful bill’ here in another year because there’s going to be a couple more big, beautiful bills.’

Vice President JD Vance is hosting senior Trump administration officials at his residence in Washington, D.C. for dinner on Wednesday evening to discuss, among other things, how the administration should handle the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein fallout and move forward, Fox News has learned.

Vance invited U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to dinner at the sprawling, 12-acre vice-presidential residence in Northwest Washington. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is also expected to be in attendance, according to sources familiar. 

News of the dinner was first reported by CNN. It comes after weeks of unsuccessful attempts by senior Trump officials to quell mounting public pressure to release more information related to the Epstein investigation — underscoring the sticking power of the Epstein scandal, including among Trump supporters, who have been some of the leading voices demanding the release of additional information.

A spokesperson for Vance disputed the CNN report in question, which he described to Fox News as ‘pure fiction.’ 

‘There was never a supposed meeting scheduled at the vice president’s residence to discuss Epstein strategy,’ William Martin, Vance’s communications director, said in a statement. 

Two well-placed sources in the administration subsequently confirmed to Fox News that the dinner at the vice president’s residence is taking place. They said that the dinner — while not focused entirely on the Epstein fallout — will be one of the topics they plan to discuss.

The Justice Department and the White House have also struggled to coordinate their messaging on the ongoing fallout from the Epstein scandal, following the release of an unsigned July 7 memo that said they did not plan to release additional information about the investigation.

Most recently, the White House and DOJ have been at odds over whether to release an audio file and transcript from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interview with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell late last month, senior administration officials confirmed.

It is unclear how long the audio footage and transcripts from the interviews between Blanche’s interview with Maxwell are, but they do exist, Fox News Digital reported yesterday, and discussions remain underway today involving whether — and when — to release the transcript.

Fox News Digital reported yesterday that DOJ officials have both the audio and transcript from Blanche’s interview with Maxwell, which took place over two days at the U.S. Attorney’s office near the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida, where Maxwell had been serving out a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

Maxwell was transferred last week without explanation to a new, minimum-security women’s federal prison camp in Texas.

Anything released by the Trump administration would almost certainly involve heavily redacting any identifying information of individuals named in the transcript in order to protect victims — something Bondi has stressed in public on multiple occasions.

News of Vance’s dinner prompted fresh concerns from family members of one Epstein victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who committed suicide earlier this year. 

‘We understand that Vice President JD Vance will hold a strategy session this evening at his residence with administration officials,’ Giuffre’s sibling said in a statement Wednesday shared with Fox News Digital. ‘Missing from this group is, of course, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Their voices must be heard, above all,’ they said.

‘We reiterate that Ghislaine Maxwell should have remained in a maximum security prison and does not deserve the luxuries currently afforded her.’

Pressure to release information has been unrelenting in the weeks since July 7, when the Justice Department said in an unsigned memo that it did not plan to release more information about the investigation. The Justice Department and FBI also said that investigators had not found a so-called ‘client list’ from Epstein, as had been suggested widely online, and by some Trump officials earlier this year.

Asked on Fox News in February about news that the DOJ would release ‘the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,’ and when that would happen, Bondi replied, ‘It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.’ 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said Bondi had been referring more broadly to all the files related to Epstein, and not a single list.

The Department of Justice made a sweeping request to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence this week for more information about allegations of a 2016 conspiracy to tie President Donald Trump to Russia, marking the next step in the department’s grand jury inquiry into the matter.

A DOJ prosecutor asked the ODNI for a range of documents to supplement Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s recent request to the DOJ to investigate Obama administration officials over the alleged conspiracy. The Federalist first reported on the prosecutor’s request. A source familiar with the request confirmed the veracity of the report to Fox News Digital.

The prosecutor requested in a letter to the ODNI a dozen categories of items, including any nonpublic material Gabbard had pertaining to the tranche of declassified documents she made public in July. 

Gabbard also revealed Tuesday night on the Ingraham Angle that she had met that day with the DOJ prosecutors involved in the grand jury inquiry. Gabbard said they ‘have more questions, and they’re going to be really taking a deep dive into this again.’

‘They are committed to leaving no stone unturned as they conduct this grand jury investigation and find the truth,’ Gabbard said.

The revelation that a meeting had occurred and that a DOJ official leading the grand jury inquiry is seeking records from the ODNI signals that the probe is underway and in an information-gathering phase. 

Grand jury investigations are conducted in secret and can take days, weeks or longer to conclude. Prosecutors present the grand jury with evidence, and the panelists on the jury are tasked with deciding whether probable cause exists to charge someone with a crime. Obtaining an indictment against a person through a grand jury is generally much easier than the subsequent process of securing a conviction against them.

Fox News Digital first reported on the existence of a grand jury investigation related to Gabbard’s intelligence on Monday, but it remains unclear whom is being targeted in the investigation or what criminal charges could be on the table and still within the statutes of limitations.

Gabbard has alleged that newly declassified evidence shows that President Barack Obama and his national security officials, including John Brennan, James Comey and James Clapper, had forgone typical protocols to compile a faulty intelligence product after President Donald Trump won the election in 2016 that undermined his election win.

Gabbard alleged that the intelligence laid the ‘groundwork’ for the Trump-Russia narrative that loomed over much of the president’s first administration. Trump’s first presidency was dominated by two-year-long special counsel inquiries surrounding Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, but neither special counsel identified a conspiracy among Obama officials like the one Gabbard has now alleged.

The DOJ official’s letter to ODNI this week also included a request for information about any intelligence community investigations into media leaks, signaling that those could also be part of the grand jury probe. Gabbard has claimed the media obtained information through the Obama administration that helped to falsely attribute Trump’s win to Russian interference in the election in the eyes of the public.

Obama recently rejected Gabbard’s allegations through a spokesperson in a rare statement.

‘Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,’ the statement said. ‘But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.’

Russia narrowly avoided an armed skirmish with Romania, a member of the NATO alliance, after striking just a half mile from its border. 

Romanian defense officials believe the new law passed by parliament explicitly allowing its armed forces to shoot down Russian drones that fly over its territory prevented the Kremlin from incurring on its territory. 

Russia struck a gas distribution center in the Ismail Area of Ukraine with Shahed kamikaze drones on Tuesday and Wednesday, so close to Romania’s border that Bucharest deployed F-16 aircraft to monitor. No unauthorized intrusions were reported. 

‘They know we passed this law, and in the last two months they have avoided crossing into our airspace,’ one Romanian defense source told Fox News Digital. 

Ilie Bolojan, Romania’s then-acting president, signed the law, which Romanian parliament had passed in February in response to Russian drones spilling over into its territory during attacks on Ukraine. 

The law specifies that Romanian authorities must establish the drone’s position and identity, attempt contact, intercept and fire warning shots, before neutralizing it. 

Piloted vehicles can only be destroyed if they conduct an attack or respond aggressively. 

Romania shares a 380-mile-wide border with Ukraine, though at this time there is no evidence Moscow has deliberately targeted its territory. 

Ukraine typically receives gas through the Orlovka gas distribution center in Izmail from Greece, Turkey and Romania. 

If Russia had incurred into Romanian territory and Romania responded by shooting down its drones, a tit-for-tat escalation risks drawing a NATO member state directly into the war.

NATO allies agree to Article 5, a collective defense pact that states each would come to the aid of the other in the case of an attack. 

Earlier this week, drones believed to originate in Belarus, a client state of Russia, landed in Lithuanian territory. 

Other eastern European states have enacted new laws to fortify their borders from the threat of Russia: Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania pulled out of an international treaty banning the use of landmines over humanitarian concerns earlier this year. 

Lithuania this week asked NATO to help strengthen its air defenses after a Russian drone carrying explosives entered its territory. 

‘This is not just Lithuanian airspace, not just Lithuania’s security — it is NATO airspace, NATO security and also EU security,’ foreign minister Kęstutis Budrys said.